by Arlene James
“I, um, won’t be long,” he said, easing back a step. “Anna.”
Going back to her skates, she him cut a sly look from the corners of her eyes. “Should I tell Gilli that you’ll have a surprise for her?”
“Um, okay.” Except…Surprise? He’d thought a card, something appropriately girlie. That suddenly seemed laughably inadequate now. He had the feeling that Anna Mir—make that just plain Anna—would have a suggestion. Not quite believing that he was doing this, he asked, “What sort of surprise would you recommend?”
A smile came and went on her face. “There’s a reason chocolate is a traditional Valentine’s Day gift. Females love it, females of every age.”
Was that a hint? he wondered. Surely not, but…“Will you be here when I get back?”
“Maybe. I have some stuff to go over with your aunts.”
“I won’t be long,” Reeves promised again, hurrying around to drop down behind the steering wheel of his sedan.
He probably ought to have his head examined for what he was about to do, but he couldn’t see any other option. He couldn’t very well give his aunts and Gilli gifts in front of Anna Miranda. Rather, Anna. Besides, he owed her for teaching Gilli to skate. He would just have to pick up something for Anna, too. The idea made him distinctly nervous, but then he thought of a way to blunt the impact, so to speak. He’d also buy small gifts for the household staff. It was only fair. Hilda, Carol and Chester looked after Gilli as much as his aunts did, and they took care of him, too. Yes, he definitely ought to demonstrate his gratitude to the staff of Chatam House.
“Thank You for the reminder, Lord, and thank You again for the sanctuary of Chatam House,” he whispered as he started the car and made the loop in the driveway that would take him back to the street. “I’m trying to take advantage of this opportunity that You’ve given me to do better with my daughter.” He drew a deep breath before adding, “And thank You for Anna. I’m trying to do better with her, too.”
Who knew? They might even wind up friends.
Now, wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?
Chapter Five
“How wonderful,” Hypatia said in reply to Gilli’s exuberant account of her adventure in skating.
Gilli’s head bobbed like a bouncing rubber ball, and all the while she chattered. “They aren’t too big for extra socks. My nose got cold, but not my toes, and not my hands and not my head. And it didn’t even hurt when I fell down.” She glanced around, then asked, “Where’s Daddy?”
“He’ll be in soon,” Anna told her, “with a surprise.”
Gilli gasped.
“You must be hungry after all that exercise,” Magnolia said, getting to her feet. “Hilda ought to have something special to eat in the kitchen.”
“Excellent,” Hypatia said as Magnolia trundled off. “Now about the samples…”
Gilli got up to hang over the arm of Anna’s chair, but she quickly grew tired of the conversation and began to whine until Magnolia came in bearing a tray crowded with the paraphernalia of a proper tea, including a platter of heart-shaped cookies with red icing. Moments later, when Reeves came in, a big bag in one hand and Gilli’s skates in the other, Gilli was sitting on the floor at the end of the coffee table, drinking milk from a cup with a chip on the bottom rim and munching on cookies. Hypatia rescued the teacup when Gilli leaped up and literally threw herself at her father.
“Now, now,” Reeves admonished mildly, working his way around the table. “Patience.” He sat on the floor with Gilli. Mags jumped up to go for another cup, but he forestalled her. “Wait! I have something for you to take to the kitchen with you.”
“What is it? What is it?” Gilli screeched, bouncing on her knees.
He held her off with one hand while he delved into the bag with the other, pulling out at least a half-dozen envelopes and a like number of small heart-shaped candy boxes, which he placed on the top of the coffee table. Gilli squealed with delight as he matched the cards to the boxes and passed them out.
“This is for you,” he said, handing his daughter the pink box and envelope. While she shredded the envelope to get at the card inside, he simultaneously placed a red box and white envelope in Hypatia’s lap and a flowered box and purple envelope in Odelia’s.
“My favorite!” Odelia exclaimed, clutching the box of chocolate-covered cherries.
“And mine,” Hypatia said, over the box of solid chocolates in her lap.
Magnolia got chocolate-covered pecan pralines, to her laughing delight, and a bright green envelope. He handed over two more cards and boxes, one of the latter larger than the other.
“These are for Carol and Hilda and Chester,” Reeves told. “I didn’t think I ought to buy Chester his own box. What do you think?”
“I’d say not,” Mags told him, pointing to the white satin box and pale blue envelope left on the table, “but then who is that for?”
Anna’s heart sped up when Reeves’s gaze met hers. For me? she thought, swallowing a gasp.
“To thank you,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.
Odelia squeaked like a mouse. Magnolia shot her sister an oddly triumphant glance as she turned away, laden with goodies for the kitchen. It was Hypatia’s calm, warm smile that helped Anna reach forward with trembling fingers to gather in the box of assorted chocolates and the card.
“H-happy Valentine’s,” she managed just as Gilli, who had dispensed with her card and been busily tearing the cellophane off her box, spilled pieces of candy across her father’s lap.
“Whoa!” he said, frowning, but then Gilli threw her arms around his neck, her mouth stuffed with the one piece of chocolate she’d managed to get her hands on. His expression froze, but the poignancy that shone from his brown eyes squeezed Anna’s foolish heart.
Suddenly, she felt like that needy little girl again, the one who would do anything to be noticed, to prove that she was wanted. Slightly panicked and feeling terribly conspicuous, Anna shot to her feet, juggling her portfolio with Reeves’s shocking gift. She hadn’t even read the card yet. Curiosity all but burned a hole in her brain, but she could not bring herself to open that envelope in company.
“I—I have to run. It’s been…” For one horrible moment, her mind went totally blank, but then Reeves dropped his gaze, beginning to help Gilli pick up the candy pieces and return them to the box. As if released from some invisible grip, Anna’s thoughts began to whir again. “It’s been quite a morning.”
“Oh, don’t hurry off, Anna Miranda dear,” Odelia urged.
“Actually,” Reeves put in, his gaze carefully averted, “I think she prefers to be called just plain Anna these days.” His eyes met hers then. “Isn’t that so, Anna?”
For some insane reason she said, “All my best friends do. C-call me Anna, that is.” She could have kicked herself for saying such an inane thing. “I—I really have to go.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Hypatia said, starting to rise.
“No, no.” Anna moved swiftly toward the entry hall. “I know the way. Enjoy your tea before it gets cold. I’ll be in touch.”
She practically ran from the room, relieved that Hypatia sank back down into her chair. As she made her escape, one crazy notion kept circulating through Anna’s mind. Reeves Leland had bought her a Valentine’s Day gift. Reeves Leland had bought her a Valentine’s Day gift.
Her heart pounding, she rushed home to her apartment and feverishly let herself inside. Tossing her keys into a bowl atop a plant stand near the door, she dumped the portfolio in the single chair that comprised her living room furniture before carrying the card and candy box to the drawing board that took up the majority of the space. Carefully, Anna peeled back the flap of the envelope and pulled the card free.
It was a thank-you card.
Tamping down her disappointment, she peeled the cellophane from the candy box and lifted off the lid. She popped a chocolate piece into her mouth. As orange cream melted on her tongue, she mused that at least the card h
ad a heart of pink lace and a bouquet of yellow and blue flowers on the front. Plus, to be fair, the sentiment was appropriate. She opened the card and read it aloud around the remnants of the chocolate.
“You did a thoughtful thing when you didn’t have to, and your efforts are greatly appreciated. God bless you.” It was signed, “Reeves Kyle Leland.”
The doofus had signed it with his full name, as if there might have been another Reeves in the room. Why were men so stupid? Every man she had ever known was clueless, not that she’d known very many.
Anna picked another candy from the box and let her thumb sink into its middle, cracking the chocolate shell to reveal the pink cream inside. The faint aroma of strawberries teased her nose. She slipped the candy into her mouth, taste buds exploding with chocolate and strawberry, and looked around at the cramped little apartment, which was all she could afford on her meager salary.
With a living room turned studio, despite the sagging, slip-covered chair in the corner, and a kitchen the size of a linen closet, she mostly lived in her bedroom, which made entertaining problematic, not that she had much company. Most of her women friends were married now and starting families, and she made sure to keep the few men she dated well away from here.
Pensively sucking the tip of her thumb clean, Anna folded the card and slid it back into its envelope. As she picked another chocolate from the box, she told herself that it did not matter that the card lacked any romantic sentiment. The days when Reeves Kyle Leland had been a hero to her were long gone. Now he was just an acquaintance, an oblivious father with a little girl too much like herself. If the yawning pit of longing inside her felt unhappily reminiscent of high school, well, Anna knew better than to expect that to have changed. It would be enough, she told herself, if they could just be friends. It would, in fact, be more than she had any reason to hope for.
Reeves pushed away his plate and sat back in his chair, his gaze going to his daughter, seated opposite him next to Odelia. Aunt Mags occupied the chair beside him, while Hypatia, naturally, sat at the head of the massive Renaissance Revival table, leaving the foot and six more chairs empty. Running a finger along the gadrooned edge of the table, Reeves tried not to listen to the clunk, clunk, clunk of Gilli’s shoes against the stylized Corinthian column that supported the dark, parquet top. She had been a perfect little darling all through dinner, and he hated to upset the applecart by reprimanding her for kicking the table leg with her rubber-toed tennies. It wasn’t as if she was doing damage to the table. For some reason, though, his nerves had been on edge all evening, as if the world had unexpectedly shifted on its axis and thrown everything off balance.
He had felt this way once before. That had been the day when Marissa had announced that she was not ready for a child, despite the fact that she was pregnant. She had proposed that they “put off” parenthood. In one horrific moment, he had realized how fundamentally selfish his wife was and that his feelings for her had irrevocably changed. Why he should think of that now, though, he couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t as if anything had really changed today. Sure, Gilli had learned to skate, but why should that rock his world? Yet, something was different. It was as if a cavern had opened in the floor of the ocean, sucked up all the water and spewed it out again in another direction.
He stared at his daughter, trying to figure out what had happened. She looked up from her plate and smiled, her mouth full of buttered brioche. He thought about correcting her table manners but didn’t.
“I have dessert now, Daddy?”
He sat forward and made a show of assessing her plate, which had been picked almost clean despite the cookies and chocolate on which she had dined earlier. “Okay.”
“You did very well,” Odelia praised her.
Gilli beamed. “I get one piece, don’t I, Daddy?”
Nodding, he watched as Hypatia produced that one piece of airy chocolate and crisp rice. Gilli gobbled it down.
“What do you say?” Reeves coached automatically.
To his surprise, she ran around the table and threw herself against him, crying, “Thank you!”
All the water in the ocean rushed back into that undersea cavern. He felt as helpless against it as a piece of flotsam wafting to the ocean floor, waiting to be thrown willy-nilly in a direction it had never traveled before.
Awkwardly, he patted his daughter’s back, suggesting, “Why don’t you go play until bath time, hmm?”
She ran out of the room without another word or a backward glance.
“I knew Anna Miranda would be good for her,” Odelia gushed.
Whoosh! The tide spewed and flung him blindly out to sea. He cleared his throat, shifted in his seat and tried to keep his voice level and casual. “Learning to skate certainly seems to have given Gilli a sense of accomplishment.”
“And it’s Anna, dear,” Hypatia reminded her sister gently.
“Oh. Yes. Amazing what a little time and patient instruction can accomplish with one so young,” Odelia went on. “Who’d have thought it? Anna was just brilliant with Gilli today. Don’t you agree, Reeves?”
He opened his mouth but couldn’t find a thing to say that wouldn’t drown him, so he closed it again and tilted his head in what might have been construed as a nod. But how, he wondered, could Anna Miranda Burdett be a good influence on his impressionable daughter? Okay, she’d been right about it being time to teach Gilli to skate, though Reeves still privately marveled that anyone could get Gilli to concentrate long enough to do something as physically complicated as skating. That did not mean that Anna knew more about his daughter than he. Did it?
Odelia apparently thought so. “If ever a woman was born to understand a child,” she pressed on, “it’s Anna Miranda and Gilli.” No one corrected her use of Anna’s full name this time.
Reeves felt as if he was choking. “Excuse me,” he said, dropping his napkin onto his plate. “I’d better check on Gilli.”
He left the dining room as sedately as he could manage, despite feeling as if he was being dragged down into that undersea cavern again. Only God knew when and where the unmanageable sea of difficulties that was his life would spit him up next time, but he had the unsettling feeling that wherever that new shore might be, Anna Miranda Burdett would be there waiting. Worse, he feared that Odelia just might be right about her. But, if Anna was actually good for his daughter, then what did that make him?
The problem, he decided. That made him the problem. Just as Marissa had said.
Maybe, he told himself bleakly, it would be best if Marissa did take over raising their daughter. If only he could convince himself that Marissa really cared for Gilli and not whatever financial support might come with her. He just didn’t know what was best anymore, and he wasn’t sure now that he ever had.
“Nooooo!” Gilli twisted and pulled, trying to free herself of Reeves’s hold as he divested her of her coat.
“Cut it out now,” Reeves scolded, keeping his voice pitched low. “You know you have to go to Sunday school.”
“I don’t want to!”
Somehow he’d expected her good behavior to carry over from the day before, but she’d been fighting him all morning, first over what to eat for breakfast and then over getting dressed. Gilli insisted that she hated the dark green velvet and black satin dress that Aunt Mags had given her for Christmas, but it was a cold-weather dress that was already too small, and Reeves figured that if she didn’t wear it now, she wouldn’t get to wear it at all, which would undoubtedly hurt Magnolia’s feelings. After he’d gotten Gilli outfitted in black tights, black patent leather shoes and the abhorred dress, he’d had to badger her into the very coat that she didn’t want to take off now. He simply could not fathom what her problem was today.
Glancing around at the families passing through the hallway of the children’s education wing, Reeves wondered why his daughter had to be the only one to balk at going into her class. She had done so almost since she’d been promoted to the three-year-old room six weeks
ago. To calm her, he released his grip on her coat but blocked her flight with his body, trapping her against the wall.
“Gilli, you have to go in.”
“I wanna stay with you.”
Frustration boiled up in him. “You’re just being silly,” he told her sharply. “I’m sure you’ll have fun. Now get in there and enjoy yourself!”
A derisive chuckle had him turning his head. Anna Miranda—rather, Anna—stood with arms folded not a yard away. “You figure that’s going to work, Stick?”
Overwhelmed and disappointed by the events of the morning, he used his most repressive tone, the one that made his subordinates gulp. “Excuse me?”
Clearly unimpressed, Anna dropped her arms and sauntered closer. “In my experience, you can’t just order someone to enjoy themselves.”
He felt his face heat. Okay, technically, she was right, but she didn’t understand what he’d been through that morning or the resulting level of his frustration. Where had all the amity between him and his daughter gone? Dredging up his driest tone, he drawled, “No? Really? So good of you to share that. Considering you don’t have a clue about what’s going on here.”
“No?”
“No.”
Anna parked her hands on her hips, and suddenly he realized that she wore a sweater dress the exact color of blue as her eyes, as well as a pair of tall, sleek black boots. Both left just her shapely knees bare. That dress, modest as it was, left no doubt as to her womanly shape, and Reeves found that it required conscious effort to resist the alarming impulse to step closer.
Something of his thoughts must have shown in his expression, for she instantly bristled. “What’s your problem?”
Reeves tried to cover his disturbing fascination with a frown. “I don’t have one, other than my daughter not wanting to go into her Sunday school class.”
Gilli, who had been staring through the window behind them into the busy, colorful room beyond, tugged on his sleeve. “Daddy, I wanna stay with you.”
